Planners order more parking from Pleasant St. take-out
PLANNING
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Old South Diner owner Gary Roy's plan to open a country market offering take-out food and sundry retail items from the former Pleasant Street post office is being held up by the Planning Board.

Roy wants to sell fresh, homemade breakfast bakery items, lunch and dinner in take-out form, but also beverages, candy, newspapers and magazines from the building that he is leasing from Laura Viera Labbe and her father, Leroy Viera at 112 Pleasant St.

But his neighbors are concerned about increased levels of noise, trash, traffic, the poor appearance of the property and omnipresent parking limitations. At the April 14 meeting, although parking issues related to the retail uses in the building refocused the board's attention to Roy's parking plan, Planning Board Chairman Frank Spriggs said Roy's revised site plan looked "very much improved."

Between the April 3 and April 14 meetings, Paul Jensen, Roy's attorney, said he helped Roy make the changes in response the board's and his neighbors' congestion, parking and site anxieties about the proposal.

"We're no longer in the Pleasant Street right of way, we're required to have six parking spots, but we're going to have eight," said Jensen. "We'll have at least three garbage receptacles and my client wants to say that he has already contracted to spend about $15,000 on landscaping, as that site is not a particularly attractive site."

Formerly configured for angled parking spaces when the U.S. Postal Service operated there, Roy originally changed the layout of the parking lot to meet the town's parking requirement for his use under the Mid-Island Planned Overlay District (MIPOD) bylaw with five parking spaces. Under this first plan, and in the revised one, Roy put a handicap space in front of the handicap ramp going into the building, three spaces inside the lot on the corner of Dave and Pleasant streets and two inside the lot just north of those three spaces.

However, because the three spaces on the corner were partially in the town's right of way for Pleasant Street and the town may be following through with a Mid-Island Area Plan recommendation that would widen Pleasant Street, make it oneway heading north and put parking on its east side, Roy had to move these parking spaces out of this right of way.

However, because at least two Planning Board members believe Roy's new business will include retail, Roy would be required to provide one space for 200 square feet of retail space and one space for every three peak-shift employees, said Senior Planner Leslie Snell.

Based on Roy's plan, he would need four more parking spaces for his retail use, said Planning Board member Sylvia Howard on April 14.

"I have to agree with Mrs. Howard, the newspapers I can allow, but when you start getting into magazines you're allowing people to browse a little bit longer," said Planning Board member Barry Rector.

Though Jensen protested, citing the board's decision on Cowboy's in Bayberry Commons where it waived five such retail parking spaces, Rector persisted, drawing a parallel between Roy's proposal and Henry's Jr. and Cowboy's.

"The post office was a different animal with a much higher turnover rate than what you have here. It wasn't great, but it worked," said Rector. "It's going to function more like a Henry's Jr., it's going to function more like a Cowboy's sometimes."

Rector also opined that although he knew it was highly unlikely that building could be moved back on the lot to make room for on-street parking for when Pleasant Street becomes one-way, at the very least he hoped that Roy would have his landscaper build a brick sidewalk in front of his take-out joint, as brick sidewalks are recommended in the MIPOD district.

Before continuing Roy's hearing to the board's May 12 meeting, it asked Jensen to provide it with information on hours of operation, a lighting plan, the types of trash containers Roy plans to use, with a screening plan for them, and to work with the planning staff on a slightly better landscaping plan, meet the parking requirements for retail use and bring a copy of Roy's lease

agreement to that meeting. I